-side, and the frequent foot-bridges that indicate the numbers
that have taken this wild walk before us. My father fancies he enjoys
our security from the summer swarms, but the social principle born in
him masters his theories.

Alice and I were amused this morning, just at the highest access of our
enthusiasm, while we stood under a huge rock wedged in between the two
walls, on looking back, to see my father sitting on a bench arranged as
a point of sight, not gazing, but listening profoundly, his graceful
person and beautiful old head inclined in an attitude of the deepest
attention to a loafer who had unceremoniously joined us, and who, as my
father afterwards rather reluctantly confessed, was recounting to him
the particulars of his recent wooing of a third Mrs. Smith or Mrs.
Brown, or whatever might be her name. And when we returned to our
quarters at the Profile House, and came down to dinner, we met our
landlord at the door, his face even more than usually effulgent with
smiles.

'There has a lady and gentleman come in,' he said, 'and your father has
no objection to their dining at table with you?'

His voice was slightly deprecatory; I think he didn't quite give us
credit for our father's affability. Of course we acquiesced, and were
afterwards edified by our brief acquaintance with the strangers, a
mother and son, who had come up from the petty cares of city life for a
quiet ramble among the hills to find here

'A peace no other season knows.'

The mother wears widow's weeds, and has evidently arrived at the
'melancholy days.' As we just now sat enjoying our evening fire, 'My
hearthstone,' she said, 'was never cold for seventeen years, but there
is no light there now. My children are dispersed, and he who was dearest
and best lies under the clods. My youngest and I hold together--I can
not let him go.'

The loving companionship of a mother and a son who returns to her
tenderness the support of his manly arm, never shrinking from the
shadows that fall from her darkened and stricken heart, or melting those
shadows in his own sunny youth, is one of the consoling pictures of
life.

This poor lady seems to have the love of nature which never dies out. It
is pleasant to see with what patience her son cares for the rural wealth
she is amassing in her progress through the hills, the late flowers and
bright leaves and mosses, though I have detected a boyish, mischievous
smile as he stowed them away.